luni, 20 august 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Acest rezumat nu este disponibil. Dați clic aici pentru a vedea postarea.

SERP Crowding & Shrinkage: It's Not Your Imagination

Posted: 19 Aug 2012 08:00 PM PDT

Back in June, I wrote about what I called the “Bigfoot” Update, a major Google ranking fluctuation that seemed to be tied to SERP crowding. Put simply, fewer domains were getting more real estate in the Top 10. Since June, this trend only seems to be continuing. This is a graph of domain diversity from April 4, 2012 through last Thursday (August 16):

Domain Diversity (4/4 - 8/16)

The percentage represents the density of unique subdomains across the entire data set (Top 10 rankings for 1,000 keywords) – the lower the domain diversity, the more crowding in the SERPs. The large drops are: (1) the original Penguin update and (2) the “Bigfoot” update. Crowding continued to worsen until (3), when a slight improvement occurred around 8/14.

The Incredible Shrinking SERPs

As I was digging into (3), I noticed that something else happened around that same time. There was a burst of chatter that people were seeing only 7 results on some SERPs. One of the benefits of the Mozcast data set is that I can go back and run new stats over historical Page 1 rankings. So, I set out to determine if this 7-result phenomenon was real, and if so, if it was new. This is a graph of Top 10 SERPs with less than 10 results since April 4:

SERPS with <10 Results

While, historically, it seems there have been some SERPs with less than 10 results for a while, they ranged from 1-4% of the data set. In just two days, from about August 12-14, that number jumped to over 18%. Mozcast shows Page 1 SERPs with between 7-10 results, but almost the entire spike occurred in the 7-result pages. This is a graph of just the 7-result data:

SERPs with Exactly 7 Results

SERPs with 7 results were an anomaly prior to 8/13, with the system tracking a maximum of one (0. 1%) on any given day. On 8/13, that number jumped to 10.7% and then, the following day, to 18.3%. Almost one-fifth of SERPs tracked by our data now have 7 results.

“George Is Getting Upset!”

Nobody likes shrinkage, and we naturally get upset when someone messes around with our familiar, 10-result page. So, what’s happening here? Here’s a sample SERP, for “pc tools”, with numbered results (1-7):

7-result SERP ("PC Tools")

You’ll notice two things right away: (1) “PC Tools” is a brand, and (2) the #1 result has expanded site-links. Not every SERP affected appears to be branded, though – a search for “krill” (the #1 result is a Wikipedia entry for the crustacean) also returns 7 results, for example.

To maintain the integrity of the Mozcast crawl, I can’t do a public data dump of all of the affected keywords we measured, but spot-checking them reveals expanded site-links in almost all observable cases. While not all keyword phrases were branded, site-links and branded queries are naturally correlated.

“No! Not Six! I Said Seven!”

Sorry, I just wanted an excuse to use this movie clip. While the vast majority of the shrunken SERPs have 7 results, a couple of 6-result pages snuck into the mix. This is a screenshot from a Google result for “pictures of cats”:

6-result SERP ("pictures of cats")

Here, the standard, organic results are preceded by a mega-block of image results. Like the expanded site-links, I can only guess that these are being treated as multiple pieces of SERP “real estate”. In every case, the first result or result-block appears to be counting as more than one position.

What’s the Crowding Connection?

It’s tough to say if the slight decrease in crowding (increase in diversity) is directly related to the explosion in 7-result SERPs. My best guess is that, since many of the 7-result SERPs are branded and branded results seem to have more crowding (anecdotally, at least), cutting them short of a full 10 improved overall diversity slightly. In other words if a 10-result SERP was crowded and three got lopped off, then the remaining 10-result SERPs are counting more and pushing diversity back up a bit. It’s impossible to say if this was intentional or just a side-effect.

Why Was “Flux” Relatively Normal?

If you follow the Google weather on Mozcast, you may be wondering why temperatures were just slightly above average on the two days when SERP shrinkage rolled out. Digging into the data, it appears that the baseline flux for those two days was relatively low. Without the 7-result shift, temperatures on 8/13 would've been closer to 62°F. Combined with the two-day roll-out (split almost evenly across the two days), the introduction of the 7-result pages snuck just below the radar. It's hard to say whether the two-day roll-out was intentional or simply an artifact of our 24-hour data collection.

What Can You Do About It?

In a word: nothing. This isn't an SEO-related change, where an on-page or link-profile tweak might change your SERP back to 10 results. This is an algorithmic volume knob Google can turn and we can't, right or wrong. My best advice is to spot-check the SERPs for your main keywords. Don't just rely on rank-tracking tools - they may tell you that you're in the #8-#10 spot, but they won't tell you whether your SERP cut off after #7. If you're sitting on a lot of #8 keywords, you may find yourself suddenly on Page 2. If that's the case, it could be worth the effort to get back up into the Top 7, especially if the cost of getting from #8 to #7 is relatively low. Of course, this is a recent development, and it's likely Google is testing the waters (and could make a course-correction). My best advice is to pay attention - as part of your regular reporting process, make sure you look at SERPs in the wild, and see what you're up against.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Photo: A Sunday Stroll

Your Daily Snapshot for
Monday, August 20, 2012

Photo: A Sunday Stroll

President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and daughters Malia, left, and Sasha walk through Lafayette Park from the White House to St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., Aug. 19, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Seth's Blog : The race to the bottom

The race to the bottom

Let's not race to the bottom.

We know that industrialists seek to squeeze every penny out of every market. We know that competitors want to drive their costs to zero so that they will be the obvious commodity choice. And we know that many that seek to unearth natural resources want all of it, fast and cheap and now.

We can eliminate rules protecting clean water or consumer safety. We can extort workers to show up and work harder for less, in order to underbid a competitor. We can take advantage of less sophisticated consumers and trick them into consuming items for short-term satisfaction and long-term pain. These might be painful outcomes, but they're an direct path to follow. We know how to do this.

In our connected world, commodity producers are under intense pressure. The price of anything that's made to a spec, or that responds to an RFP, is instantly known by all buyers. That means that there's an argument made by big corporations for each country to charge corporations the lowest possible tax rate, to loosen environmental regulations down to zero, and to eliminate employee protections. All so that a country's commodity producers can be the cheapest ones.

I know we can do that. There's always the opportunity to cut a corner, sacrifice lifestyle quality and suck it up as we race to grab a little more market share.

But the problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win.

You might make a few more bucks for now, but not for long and not with pride. Someone will always find a way to be cheaper or more brutal than you.

The race to the top makes more sense to me. The race to the top is focused on design and respect and dignity and guts and innovation and sustainability and yes, generosity when it might be easier to be selfish. It's also risky, filled with difficult technical and emotional hurdles, and requires patience and effort and insight. The race to the top is the long-term path with the desirable outcome.

Sign me up.